Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1887-07-30
MODERN MARRIAGE.
Ertract from "1he Woman Question:"
by Dr.. and Mrs. 4peling

Another proof of the commercial ma
ture of our marriage system is afforded
by the varying times as which wedlock
is customary in the varying grades of
society. The time is in no sense regu-
lated, as it ought to be, by the time of
life Some favored individuals, kings.
princes, aristocrats, marry, or are mar
ried, at the age to which Nature points
as fitting. Many of the working class
marry young-Nhat is, at the natural
period. The virtuous capitalist who at
that age makes habitual use of prosti-
tuition dilates unctuously upon the i'm
providence Of the artizan. The student
of physiology and economics notes the
fact us interesting evidence that not
even the frightful capitalistic system has
crushed out normal and righteous in
stinct. But, with the stratum of society
wedged in between these two, unions, rs
we have just seen, cannot take place as
rule until years after the heyday of
youth is passed and passion is on the
Wane.
All this tells far more on the women
than on the men. Society provides,
recognizes, legalizes for the latter the
means of gratifying the sex Instinct. In
the eyes of that same society an unmar-
ried woman who acts after the fashion
habitual to her unmarried brothers and
the men that dance with her at balls, or
work with her in the shop, is a pariah.
Ard even with the working classes who
marry at the normal time, the life Of the
woman under the present system is the
more arduolls and irksome of the two.
The old promise of the legend, ''in sor,
row shalt thou bring forth children is
not only realized, but eWtended. she
has to bring them up through long years,
unrelieved by rest, unblightened by hope,
in the same atmosphere of perennial
labor and sorrow. The man, worn out
as he may be by labor, has the evening
in which to do nothing. The woman is
occupied until bedtime comes. Often
with young children goes far into, or all
through, the night.
When marriage has taken place all is
in favor of the one and is adverse to the
other. Some wonder that John Stuart
Mill wrote, Marriage is at the present
day the only actual form of serfdom re-
cognized by law" The wonder to us is
that he never saw this serfdOm as glss-
ton, not of sentiment, but of economics,
the result of our captalslic system.
After marriage, as before, the woman Is
under restraint, and the man is not.
Adultery in her is a crime, in him a
venal offence. Marriages thus ar
ranged, thus carried out, with
such an attendant train of circum-
stances and of consequences, seem to us
let US say it with all deliberation-
worse than prostitution. To call them
sacred or moral is IA Dissertation.
In connection with the subject of di-
yorce we may note an inStanf of the
self deception, not only of society and
it's constituent classes, but of individuals.
The clergy are ready and willing to mar
ry anybody and everybody, age to youth,
vice to virtue, "and no questions asked,
AS a certain class of advertisements put
it. Yet the clergy set their faces most
sternly against divorce, To protest
AGAINST such discordant unions as they
again and again ratify would he an lin
reference with the liberty of the sub
iect." But to oppose nything that IA
cilitates divorce is a most serious inter-
ference with the liberty of the subject.
The whole question of divorce, complex
in any case is !.iade more complicated by
the fact that it has to be considered, first
in relation TO the present conditions,
second i'm relation to the socialistic con-
ditions of the future. Many advanced
thinkers plead for greater facility of di-
vorce now. They contend that divorce
ought to be made at least as easy AS
marriage; that an engagement entered
into by people who have had little or no
opportunity of knowing one another
ought not to be irrevocably, or even
stringently binding; that incompatibility
of temper, generalization of deep-rooted
hopes, actual dislike, should be sufficient